DaviddesJ
Deity
It's an ego thing, unfortunately. People want to play on high difficulty *and* they don't want it to be hard, because they want to feel uplifted by their success. No, it's not very rational. :-(
Humankind Game by Amplitude
- Thread starter AtlantisAuthor
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It's an ego thing, unfortunately. People want to play on high difficulty *and* they don't want it to be hard, because they want to feel uplifted by their success. No, it's not very rational. :-(
Depends a bit on the naming of the difficulty levels though. Players are not proud of beating a game on „easy“ when the Choice is between that and normal. Some games only offer normal and specific hard modes (more AI bonuses or penalties for the player) and in such cases playing on „normal“ is no shame at all - „that‘s how it supposed to be played, right?“ For games that offer many difficulty levels, like civ or HK, you are completely right though. I think there are too many levels in civ, however. While I feel the difference between these nuanced ones, I think that reducing them to 3-4 would make them feel more worthwhile and leveling up more like an achievement.
Field of Glory - Empires had a 'decay' mechanic. I never played the game, but it looked interesting in that it required careful decisions what to build.
I am quite drawn to decline mechanics, but I agree it's quite trick to pull off in a way that's still fun and gives people choices. In way, that mechanism also holds the core to several major problems in 4X games. Once you expand a lot, your lead may snowball and it also introduces more micro-management. Maybe it just needs to be really hard to run a really large empire successfully over long periods, particularly if part of it was conquered. Civ V tried it somewhat, but through a different and not very flavourful route. Endless Legend introduced a stability/happiness malus for each additional city. I think I saw that only for territories in Humankind, but it could be something.
Regarding victory conditions:
I am quite drawn to decline mechanics, but I agree it's quite trick to pull off in a way that's still fun and gives people choices. In way, that mechanism also holds the core to several major problems in 4X games. Once you expand a lot, your lead may snowball and it also introduces more micro-management. Maybe it just needs to be really hard to run a really large empire successfully over long periods, particularly if part of it was conquered. Civ V tried it somewhat, but through a different and not very flavourful route. Endless Legend introduced a stability/happiness malus for each additional city. I think I saw that only for territories in Humankind, but it could be something.
Regarding victory conditions:
- I quite liked RFC's unique historical victory conditions. The problem for me was that it was so deterministic and narrowly designed that it made the game more of a puzzle than a strategy game. I always wanted a game where you can "pick" your victory conditions during the game.
- In a way, Old World does just that with ambitions. You periodically get to select one of different objectives. If you complete enough of them, you win. I'm excited to get my hands on it and see how well it works.
- Ironically, Civ - a new dawn board game tries a similar board game. I don't have experience with it, though.
- Another interesting mechanic is a relative and/or absolute lead in score. In Oriental Empires you won if you had 50% (?) more culture than the next opponent. I think there is a Civ VI mod to the score victory. It would allow to claim victory, if you have a large lead. Or maybe the victory claim could be challenge and trigger some end-game event.
- Looking more widely, Age of Wonders III had the seal victory, which is essentially King-of-the-Hill. Defend a number of map locations, which - crucially are independent of your settlements. No "I build this super important thing in the core of my empire so anyone who wants to rob my victory needs to basically conquer me." Just not very applicable in a historical setting.
- Same for travelling to Antares. Different, but doesn't really fit in historical games.
Brianstorm
Warlord
- Joined
- Jul 5, 2016
- Messages
- 185
Have they released the benefits of staying with your current culture? Sounds like an interesting mechanic to go full Babylon or even Full Egypt and switching to Final Era Egypt, staying with England instead of switching to the Dutch in the "not-colonial" era, etc.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
We haven't seen all the benefits to the end of the game, because none of the Open Devs games so far have shown us the last two Ages in play. But 'Transcending', or keeping the same Faction Age after Age, does give substantial boosts in Fame (the only Victory score) - in 'compensation' for missing out on later Emblematic Units and other assets. I have not tried Transcending myself very much in either Victor or Lucy Open Devs to get a good 'feel' for just how lucrative it is in gaining extra Fame points, but in every game it seemed that more than one of the AIs transcended at least once or twice out of 4 Ages, so they, apparently, are programmed to try it fairly often.
DaviddesJ
Deity
I'd favor naming the difficulty levels
Impossible
Beyond Impossible
Ultra Beyond Impossible
just so that people can play at the easiest difficulty and win and still feel awesome about themselves.
Impossible
Beyond Impossible
Ultra Beyond Impossible
just so that people can play at the easiest difficulty and win and still feel awesome about themselves.
FinalDoomsday
Prince
One of the AI's in the Lucy Opendev had a personality trait that meant he would always transcend which I thought was pretty fun. I'm looking forward to making my own AI personalities and seeing what kind of traits I can give them.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Ah yes, the "What was good enough for Great Great Great Granddad is Good Enough For Me!" guy. Was always glad to see him because you knew whatever Faction he picked in the Ancient Age was going to be your neighbor until the End of Time. Also, he was one less competitor for any later Faction.
Like you, I can't wait to see what kind of traits can be assigned to Avatars/Personas: I can foresee people very precisely "customizing" their games with well-chosen Opponents - a different way of arriving at Civ VI's personalized Leaders and Uniques!
7daysofwar
Warlord
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- 141
I tought you could only create one avatar so you can't really "customize" your opponents like you are describing (I tought I read that one the Games2Gather forum. The only way of getting other opponents (then the standard ones that are probably in the game) is through friends. So to "customize" your opponents you either have to look at your real life friends who bought Humankind (if they exist) or you have to hope somebody here made the opponent you want.
Link to the post I was refering to:
https://www.games2gether.com/amplit...40547-more-than-one-avatar?page=1#post-318837
7daysofwar
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 24, 2018
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There will be a closed beta for the people who prepurchased Humankind on Steam or Epic Games.
I enjoyed it--it suits Humankind well.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
The 'in game standards' were what I was referring to: once you've played with them (at least in the previous Open Devs) you could make notes on their attributes, and then cycle through them for opponents. In one (can't remember which) of the Open Devs you could even have the same Avatar in more than one AI opponent (which is so counter-intuitive I'd bet it won't be in the Release game - I suspect it was because they hadn't put together enough 'standard' Avatars yet at the time of the Open Dev). I confess in at least one game I cycled for less aggressive AI opponents because I was still trying to figure out warfare and battles, which is what leads me to speculate that, to an extent, you can 'pick' your opponents.
I'm confused. I can only make one "avatar" and I always play as that same avatar? And the only way to get other opponents is to play with other people? If that's all correct, then that's a huge disappointment. I sure hope that there are a whole lot of possible AI avatars or some randomization. I don't play online.
Atlas627
Deity
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2011
- Messages
- 2,930
I didn't play enough Field of Glory - Empires to say that I was skilled at all, but the "Decadence" mechanic certainly did mean that some amount of economic growth would eventually lead to instability. I think the principle of the mechanic is good, but I was never quite sure if it was balanced effectively because the UI was not as obvious about it's effects as it should've been.
For Old World, I find that the ambitions are really more about storytelling than anything (which is fine by me). This is because the ambitions are unknown until you actually get a chance to pick them, and so you must develop in all areas of the game no matter what. So I find it doesn't change my strategy much, but it does make me *feel* more like my character succeeded in establishing their legacy, or their child completed it for them, or it was lost to time.
Civilization - A New Dawn reveals these objectives at the beginning of the game, which makes each game different strategically. The game is much simpler than any of the videogames mentioned, though, so I am not sure that this method would work when the problem space is so much bigger. Beelining the objectives works well in the boardgame because that's what the game is designed to do. Designing a 4x videogame that way would leave out so much flavor...
Have we heard anything about when this is happening?
FinalDoomsday
Prince
It would be a strange choice indeed, If I'm lucky one aquaitance of mine will buy Humankind as well which gives me one extra avatar in my games? Amplitude just need to go look at Age of Wonders 3 or AOW: Planetfall and see how that handles it. You can go to the avatar creation option in the menu and you can make as many avatars as your heart desires. Then you go to set up a game and you're free to choose your leader and the AI's leaders from the same pool or leave them random if you wish, the game had plenty of pre made avatars for the AI and yourself to pick if you had no interest in that side of the game.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
There has been quite a bit of discussion about the Avatars over on the games2gether Forums. The biggest gripes appear ot be Lack of Variety in your opponents and lack of ability to have more than one Avatar for yourself. I suspect, not having participated in those discussions, that part of the 'background to them is that Civ gives you a much, much wider choice of opposing AI 'players' in its Unique Leaders and Alternative Leaders for the Civs.
On the other hand, I also suspect that many players don't realize just how Unique the Factions in Humankind may be in each individual game: since in each game each faction may advance as any one of 10 new Factions (or 'Transcend' and remain as before) and each Faction has different attributes/bonuses that carry forward from it, by the time you are half-way through the game the specific bonuses and attributes of each Faction in your game may be completely unique - until you've played several hundred games and seen enough of the combinations to get familiar with them.
All of that, at least to me, makes the attributes of any specific Avatar much less important as an Opponent. On the other hand, I would definitely like the opportunity to have both a Warmonger and a Peaceful Builder Avatar based on the kind of game I want to play: a Boris The Hun and Saint Gudenuf Avatars, so to speak
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Carazycool
Warlord
Has anyone else not been able to access the Beta because the games2gether website is a buggy mess?
It allowed me to create an account and to link it to my steam account. but i cant get the website to function on any browser in order to redeem my access to the beta
edit: I found a workaround. click the link in this tweet and follow the instructions:
https://twitter.com/IntelGaming/status/1404200876403834884
It allowed me to create an account and to link it to my steam account. but i cant get the website to function on any browser in order to redeem my access to the beta
edit: I found a workaround. click the link in this tweet and follow the instructions:
https://twitter.com/IntelGaming/status/1404200876403834884
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CivLuvah
Deity
Imgur album updated to include the Turks and the (modern) Japanese:
https://imgur.com/a/4cPjGSY
...And those are all the base game cultures!!!
https://imgur.com/a/4cPjGSY
...And those are all the base game cultures!!!
mitsho
Deity
Thank you for your work! 
I know we are long past this stage, but I have been reading about the late medieval era recently, and I wanted to introduce my petty nitpicky rant about the early modern culture of Venice.
Namely, I think it is somewhat awkward to make it EM culture, while its greatest era was actually medieval (12th to 15th centuries). 16th century was already a period of decline for Italy as a whole, an later centuries were even worse. Venice was superpower of trade and culture in the high to late medieval period, but its role started to decline with the ascendancy of Ottomans, the Italian wars, and especially the discovery of Americas and naval routes to India, which bypassed Mediterranean. Also, the majority of what we call "Italian Renaissance" is actually within the medieval era (for example Dante Alighieri, Boccacio and Brunelleschi were 14th century). So to sum up, I think both Venice in particular and any Italian culture in general would make much more sense as a medieval culture.
To make it even more awkward, devs chose to add merchant Venice to the EM era even though we do already have merchant European culture from this era, Dutch... And we don't even have Portugal, which also should be merchant and which is much more important for this era lol. And we don't even get any Subsaharan culture in this era (many of whom could be merchant) - instead we get Venice
I also still think Sweden would be awesome EM militarist culture, while Finland or Switzerland could easily take over modern scientist European culture.
Oh well. My rant is finished, please don't treat it too seriously
Namely, I think it is somewhat awkward to make it EM culture, while its greatest era was actually medieval (12th to 15th centuries). 16th century was already a period of decline for Italy as a whole, an later centuries were even worse. Venice was superpower of trade and culture in the high to late medieval period, but its role started to decline with the ascendancy of Ottomans, the Italian wars, and especially the discovery of Americas and naval routes to India, which bypassed Mediterranean. Also, the majority of what we call "Italian Renaissance" is actually within the medieval era (for example Dante Alighieri, Boccacio and Brunelleschi were 14th century). So to sum up, I think both Venice in particular and any Italian culture in general would make much more sense as a medieval culture.
To make it even more awkward, devs chose to add merchant Venice to the EM era even though we do already have merchant European culture from this era, Dutch... And we don't even have Portugal, which also should be merchant and which is much more important for this era lol. And we don't even get any Subsaharan culture in this era (many of whom could be merchant) - instead we get Venice
I also still think Sweden would be awesome EM militarist culture, while Finland or Switzerland could easily take over modern scientist European culture.
Oh well. My rant is finished, please don't treat it too seriously
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